


when you reach me

by ourlovelybones



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, It's something, M/M, The Flare, WICKED | WCKD Is Good, i had to write something!!, idk what this is, we got so much content today
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 00:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12157773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourlovelybones/pseuds/ourlovelybones
Summary: Newt puts a crown of dandelions on his head, laced together by the stems of grass they’ve crushed underneath their feet. “There. Now you’re a King, too.”Thomas meets Newt when they’re six years old and falls in love with him when they’re too young to understand the meaning, the promise, the intensity of word.He meets him again when they’re sixteen and Thomas is just another pair of brown eyes in the crowd.





	when you reach me

_  
The thing that scares me the most? That one day we’ll meet somewhere and you won’t remember me. Or the the things we did together. Or that I still love you._

* * *

 

The new boy talks funny.

He’s got sandy blond hair and lanky pale arms - he’s more bones than skin. He talks a lot in that funny voice, but Thomas likes the sound of it a lot more than he cares for Gally’s nasally voice or even Minho’s calm, rather plain tone. The new boy sounds mature for their age. Like his voice is dipped in honey. Thomas thinks he likes it better than Alby’s too, who has a low and slow voice when he talks to the rest of them. Alby’s the one in charge because he always _sounds_ like he knows what to do – but Thomas wonders how long that’ll last when the new kid’s around.

He’s pretty bossy for someone so scrawny. Gally’s got about five solid inches on the new kid, but he stands up to him with his arms crossed and his feet planted firmly on the ground. Frypan’s most likely twenty or thirty pounds heavier than him – even at six years old – but the new kid won’t be bossed around by him any more than he’ll listen to Alby’s orders without some backlash.

Thomas likes the new boy.

“He’s too defiant.” He overhears Dr. Paige saying one day, shaking her head as they all watched the kids play from behind a screen. He and Teresa were behind the glass with all the adults, as usual, playing with blocks and working on long and complicated math equations.

The adults nod and hum in agreement with Dr. Paige, writing words down on their clipboards. _Too defiant_ , they say. _Too unpredictable._

“It means ‘characterized by defiance; boldly resistant or challenging.’” Teresa explains to him much later, when they’re having dinner by themselves in Thomas’s bedroom. The rest of the kids get to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner together in the cafeteria. They get to take their classes together and play activities together between learning breaks. She’s the smartest of them all – they all know this. All the adults have said so. She’s the one who they’ve pushed to read and read and read for hours, memorizing roots and cognates from old Latin dictionaries, comparing them to Beginner’s Portuguese. She’s the one who spends the most time with the adults behind closed doors in lab coats, in secrets.

Thomas likes the way the word flows off of his tongue, rolling over the bitter taste of isolation and loneliness. “Defiant.”

Teresa scrunches her face as she stabs at her mashed potatoes. “It’s not a good thing, Tom.”

“What?”

She notices his eyes roaming over her uneaten mashed potatoes and sighs, before shoving her plate over to him because his plate is clean. “You’ll see.”

 

_☆_

 

Thomas sees the new boy, alright. He meets Newt for the first time on a rainy Friday afternoon, when the boy is sick with a cold.

He’s not supposed to be in the infirmary that day, but he forgot his workbook the day before and needed to complete his problem set before the weekend was over. Teresa was waiting for him back in her room so they could work on it together, but he wasn’t expecting to see the new boy so unguarded and ill.

He’s coughing horridly, the sound bouncing harshly off the confined walls of the infirmary. His skin is terribly pale, save for the splash of bright red in the middle of his face, from rubbing his nose too hard when he sneezed.

“What’re you looking at?” Newt asks him roughly, trying to hide the rasp of his funny voice.

Thomas looks shyly down at the ground. “’M sorry.”

“You’re Thomas, aren’t you?”

Thomas frowns and looks up at him. “How do you know that?”

“Everybody knows who you are, Tommy. You and the girl.”

“Teresa.” Thomas says quietly, even though it’s quite clear the new boy already knows who she is.

“Why don’t you ever come play with us?” Newt asks, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re not any better than the rest of us, you know.”

Newt’s trying to sound menacing and tough, but his cold makes his body shudder before Thomas and the fire behind his eyes is much dimmer than usual.

“I want to.” Thomas admits, staring back down at his feet. The floor tiles are impeccably white against his grey sneakers. “They said we would. One day.”

“One day?”

“Yeah. Someday.”

“Well, when’s that going to be?”

“Someday. Soon, I think. Each time I ask now, they say soon instead of someday. That’s good, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’ll do. Do you know where that bloody nurse is? I’ve been dying here for ages. She was supposed to get me tea.”

Thomas sets his workbook down on the nightstand next to Newt’s infirmary bed. “The tea is over in these cabinets.”

He walks over and opens the door, revealing the wide assortments of teas hidden away. “I can make you tea.”

Newt looks at him dubiously. “You can make tea?”

“Well, how hard can it be?”

 

_☆☆_

 

Turns out, making tea can be incredibly hard to do when you have absolutely no idea of what you’re doing.

Newt stares at the cup of water, the damp tea string barely staying afloat above the cup. “What is this.”

“It’s tea.”

“Tea doesn’t look like this.”

Thomas rolls his eyes. “Yes it does.”

“You dropped something in it. It looks like a tiny little sac.”

“Those are the tea leaves.”

Newt looks at him like he’s grown three heads. “What are you talking about? Tea doesn’t have _leaves_.”

Reluctantly, Newt drinks down Thomas’s version of “tea”, as the nurse still hasn’t returned from wherever she ran off to. He gags at the taste, Thomas rolls his eyes at the gesture, and a comfortable silence falls over them once the routine is finished.

Thomas doesn’t leave, though.

He sits down on the edge of Newt’s bed and opens his workbook.

“What’s that?”

“My workbook.”

“Yours looks different from mine.”

“Really? How so?”

Before he can respond, Newt starts coughing again, which frustrates Thomas because he gave him _tea_. Why was he still sick?

“Where are you going?” Newt croaks after he stands up and goes back to the cabinets. 

Thomas is rummaging through the cupboards. “There’s something seriously wrong with you. You could be dying.”

_“What!?”_

“The tea didn’t cure you.” Thomas explains gently, suddenly feeling bad. Poor Newt had only lived for six years and would most likely never live long enough to see the special project Thomas and Teresa were working on, the reason they always had to be separated away from the other kids.

The idea of that makes Thomas sad, but he understands what he must do now. He has to save Newt from this awful, awful disease – _he prays and prays and prays it’s not the same one that Daddy had; even Mommy and Dr. Paige couldn’t cure him_ – so that Newt can see the special project he and Teresa have been working on, and so he can play outside with him someday.

 

_☆☆☆_

_When the nurse comes back, reeking of the smell of smoke, she laughs at the predicament she finds in front of her. Thomas has prepared over five cups of tea for Newt – all different flavors, of course – has attached Dinosaur band-aids all over the parts of Newt’s skin that he said felt cold, and was trying to shove a stethoscope down Newt’s poor clammy throat by the time she walked in._

_She reassured him that Newt would be just fine – he just needed a couple of pills and a large, warm mug of tea – that Newt was not going to die, and that if he went back to his bedroom for the night, he would see Newt again very, very, very soon._

_Sooner than the soon he’d been promised._

_☆☆☆☆_

True to her word, Thomas and Teresa are allowed to play with the other kids soon after. They’re allowed to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with them in the cafeteria and play activities together during their learning breaks.

Whenever they’re not working on their special project, Teresa’s playing Tag with Minho, Gally, Frypan, and Winston. She likes to run more than Thomas does, and doesn’t mind shoving the other boys around to make sure she wins the relay races.

“Minho fancies her.” Newt tells him one day, several months after their first interaction at the infirmary. They’re sitting on the grass, watching Teresa terrorize Minho in a game of hide and go seek, and Newt looks much better than he did back then. His skin is a creamy color against his favorite burnt orange tank top and brown cargo shorts, even though he’s still the skinniest boy in their compound. They’re almost eight years old now and even though Newt’s known Alby and Minho for years whereas Thomas and Teresa practically grew up together from the small age of four years old, Thomas thinks Newt is his favorite friend.

“It’s different than a best friend.” Thomas had explained to him earlier that day before breakfast. Sometimes Newt had trouble sleeping and would knock on Thomas’s door, far earlier in the morning than he needed to, but Thomas would always answer. Even if he had been dreaming about chicken nuggets or dinosaurs, he always answered and walked around the empty halls with Newt, watching the sunlight pour in from the windows. “A best friend is the person who knows you best, because they have had to spend so much time with you.”

Newt nodded, soaking in the information. They were eight years old now – they basically knew everything.

“Your favorite friend is more special than your best friend because you choose your favorite friend.” Thomas said matter-of-factly. “And you’re my favorite friend.”

"You're my favorite friend too, Tommy."

Now, they’re outside after lunch, sitting in the sunlight instead of participating in the games with their friends. Newt got tired easily; after running for long periods of time – even short periods of time – he would start to lose his breath and have to sit out, before he started feeling light-headed and dizzy. He’d started sitting more and more games out, opting instead to pick flowers and throw them at Thomas.

“What do you mean he fancies her?” Thomas asks. He’s absentmindedly knotting together the stems of dandelions he’s crushed up by his feet.

“He wants to marry her.” Newt says simply. “He wants to be her boyfriend forever.”

“Why?”

Newt shrugs. “Who bloody knows. Maybe he thinks she doesn’t have cooties.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. All girls have cooties. That’s what Dr. Paige said, remember?”

_☆☆☆☆☆_

When they’re ten years old, Thomas and Teresa’s special project is nearly finished.

At the beginning of the project, almost four years ago, they were told they could never tell anyone but each other what they were working on. It didn’t matter if the two of them didn’t understand why they had to keep their hard work a secret – the blocks they played with day by day and the equations they had to learn how to solve day by day were _not_ to be discussed with anyone else.

Especially **not** the other kids.

So naturally, Thomas told Newt everything about it.

_He only tells Newt, though. Minho talks too much. Gally glares too much. Alby scolds too much. Frypan eats too much._

“What happens when it’s almost finished?” Newt asks quietly one night. As of the past year, Thomas had gotten accustomed to Newt coming over to his room after curfew a few nights of the week, when he was tired of being around so many people and just wanted by left in peace. He still wasn’t performing as well as the other boys were in terms of sports. He was a weak runner; a term Thomas had overheard Dr. Paige using to talk about him with the other adults.

_A smart kid. But a weak runner. Weak immune system. Didn’t he just have the flu the other day again? More tests? I think we already know the answer._

Thomas shrugs in the darkness, lying next to Newt on his bed above the covers. “They haven’t told us yet. I’m not even sure what the project really is. It just sounds cool.”

“Will you tell me when you find out?”

“Of course.”

“Do you promise you’ll tell me everything? Everything I should know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why am I the only one who’s always in the hospital?”

 

_☆☆☆☆☆☆_

There’s no one that Thomas doesn’t like – he loves all of his friends.

When it comes to Gally, he tends to think of the boy as someone who should make himself go missing one of these days, but that doesn’t mean he _hates_ him or anything.

He loves, loves, loves spending time with Newt. He spends the most time with Newt out of all of their friends and he knows the same is true for his friend.

He’s very fond of Alby and he thinks Frypan is outrageously hilarious. He’ll always love Teresa without any hesitation – and _sometimes_ the same can be said for Minho.

It’s just … Minho’s _perfect._

Minho’s smart and gets phenomenal marks on all of his school work. He’s testing off the charts in terms of athletic capabilities. It doesn’t hurt that he’s also very toned and muscular for a boy the age of twelve, or that he’s got a lovely face Teresa practically drools over in her sleep.

She’s perfect, too. She’s the smartest of them all and the wittiest. She is tough and she beat Minho in a ropes challenge set up for her birthday last year, organized by the adults she had wrapped around her finger.

There are jokes that Thomas hears around, even though he’s not supposed to.

_They’re the King and Queen of the Glade. Why isn’t Minho the one taking special classes instead of Thomas? Doesn’t he get better grades than him?_

It puts Thomas in a foul mood, when he hears the whispers in the bathroom stalls or when he's pretending to listen to music in the library while doing his work to silent headphones. It makes him bitter towards Newt, towards his favorite friend, because maybe – just maybe – if Newt had actually _tried_ harder during the athletics courses instead of sitting them out all the time, maybe he and Thomas could be the – well, the –

_King and King?_

Newt’s his favorite friend because he understands that there are moments when Thomas would rather just not speak and just lay in the grass under the sun, while listening to the other boys (and Teresa) shout at each other.

But today, Newt  _heard_ the comment. The snide remark under Gally’s breath during lunch, when Teresa and Minho walked into the cafeteria together, laughing and leaning against each other like a couple.

They sit in silence for most of their break period. Newt’s tongue sticks out between his lips and his fingers fly around, collecting flowers and breaking their stems. Thomas is content to watch him for a while, watching his eyebrows turn into a frown as he concentrates. He then reclines on his back and tries to count the amount of clouds in the sky. He even tries to make up stories for them.

 “Tommy.” Newt says, his voice breaking Thomas out of his reverie. “Look. I made you something.”

Newt puts a crown of dandelions on his head, laced together by the stems of grass they’ve crushed under their feet. “There. Now you’re a King, too.”

Thomas smiles at Newt, gently patting the flower crown atop his head. “Thank you. I love it.”

He wants to do something in this moment, something that friends probably wouldn’t do to each other. He wants to reach out and grab for Newt’s hand, rubbing circles on his palm, or peppering little kisses to his face over and over –

“Tommy?” Newt asks, snapping his fingers in front of Thomas. “Tommy, you still there?’

_I’ll always be here. For you, a thousand times over._

_☆☆☆☆☆☆☆_

It’s the day Newt turns fourteen, when everything goes to complete shit.

No one really _knows_ their birthday in the compound, so they choose when to celebrate them. Teresa likes to celebrate hers on the 13 th of March. Gally enjoys the 28th of January for unknown reasons. They always celebrate Minho’s on the 30th of September, Frypan’s on the 24th of June, and Thomas’s on the 26th of August.

On the 16th of May, they celebrate Newt’s 14th birthday for _many_ reasons.

Dr. Paige is there because she’s hoping as Newt continues to mature and age (emotionally and physically) he’ll become less _defiant._ The infirmary nurse is there to make sure Newt’s vitals stay stable throughout the night – she’s hoping she’ll finally be able to quell _all_ of their fears, that _no. Of course not! Newt does not – I can confirm that he does not – have that._

They celebrate Newt’s birthday being the kick-off of Launch Week for Thomas and Teresa’s special project. They’re _finally_ going to be able to share it with their friends – they’re finally going to see all of their hard work put together!

Thomas is on an emotional high all night. There’s absolutely _nothing_ that can break his spirits.

They dance in the common lounge room of their building, playing a rocking playlist, and they sing at the tops of their lungs just to celebrate the beauty of life. The chefs have baked a cake for Newt and soon it’s getting near time to cut the cake. Life is good. Life is _so, so_ good.

He cheers along with his friends and with the adults as Newt blows out the candles, one by one, sparing Thomas the quickest of glances before shutting his eyes.

Everything is so, so good. Everyone is so, so happy. Everything is so, so right.

They dance some more. They throw party favors at Newt, in place of presents. They eat cake some more, and then they wash it down with Sparkling Cider and Sparkling Wine (for those legal of age to drink, of course). Then they eat some more cake and dance some more throughout the night.

Newt gets tired early, because he always does. The infirmary nurse has sipped a couple more glasses of Sparkling Wine than she should’ve, but it’s perfect because Thomas offers to walk him back to the room and Newt looks immediately relieved.

Thomas doesn’t take him back to the room he shared with three other guys but rather back to his room where they lie down on the ground, on their backs, talking about anything and nothing.

“Tommy?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember when you promised me you’d tell me everything?”

Thomas refuses to let the room’s temperature get colder or for his heart to sink. _He’s having a good time tonight! He’s living a good life, tonight!_

“Am I dying?” Newt asks softly. Suddenly his head is on Thomas’s shoulder and the warmth of his body makes up for the sudden chill.

_He could tell Newt the truth._

_He wants to._

_Newt’s his favorite friend. The friend he gets ice cream with after curfew when they have no choice but to sneak to the basement storage room for shits and giggles. The friend he reads stories to when Newt can’t fall asleep or gets too frustrated because he can’t figure out how to solve a math problem. The friend he lies down with in the middle of his room, just to hear the sound of his funny voice._

_The simple answer is: yes. Newt, you’re dying. But you’re not dying, though. Not really. Do you see what I mean?_

He’ll Newt the truth tomorrow, he decides, with a clear state of mind. He’ll tell Newt when the time is right – when it’s not his birthday and he’s not sleeping soundly on Thomas’s shoulder.

 

_☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆_

He never gets to tell New the truth the next day.

 

_☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆_

 

Newt’s one of the first they choose for the Maze.

 _A Maze,_ he seethes internally. _A maze to torture my friends, the people who became my family?_

Newt’s one of the first to be ripped away in the dead of the night, to go missing in the morning. Newt’s one of the first to be seen on the screen, when they're monitoring the Maze. He's confused. Disoriented. Angry.

_He has no idea what his fucking name is._

Thomas doesn’t speak to Dr. Paige for weeks, but he suspects she knows. He suspects that this was all a game to her – a game that she was confident she was going to win.

Newt’s one of the first ones to jump. To climb up the ivory wall, to stare at his hands before he just lets them go, before he collapses and shatters on the ground into a broken pile of skin and bones.

Teresa holds him that night as he screams and cries and hurts and breaks. And the next night, and the next night. Until it’s the night that they’re taking Minho and she doesn’t know how to stop them and she doesn’t even know if she wants to stop them and now it's her turn to scream and cry and hurt and break.

Newt’s one of the first people to break his heart when he looks Minho, dead in the eyes, a boy he had been friends with since diapers, and ask, “What’s your name, shank?”

 

_☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆_

It’s completely accidental, the next time they meet again.

It’s two years later and Thomas still does “special projects” for WCKD, when he needs the distraction of a peaceful mind.

He watches Newt everyday on the screen, on the monitor, looks for him outside in the night stars. _Are they aligned? Do they look just right for us?_ He imagines Newt asking and him chuckling. As if they had all the time in the world.

Dr. Paige calls Thomas into her office under the pretense of having tea. She’s worried that he’s letting the project get too close to him. He’s worried that she’s off murdering innocent children and getting away with it.

Her teeth clench and she looks at him sharply. “Have a cup of tea, will you?”

And that cup of tea is _damn good_ – good enough to draw Thomas into a sleepy state of consciousness, until he’s slipping, slipping, slipping and she’s getting farther and farther away from him.

_WCKD is good, Thomas. You used to remember that once. Goodbye, Tho -_

_☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆_

 

He’s screaming at her, screaming and screaming as he’s shooting upwards in a box, in a rickety metal box.

_When the fuck did he get inside a box?_

He’s screaming –

Wait. Why is he screaming? What’s wrong? Why can’t he see anything anymore?

Who is she?

 _Who is he_?

 

_☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆_

When he escapes from the box, when he looks into the brown eyes of a tall, blond, and skinny stranger, something tingles in the bottom of his heart.

The tall, blond, skinny stranger reaches out his hand for Thomas. “Hi. I’m Newt. What’s your name?”

This new boy talks funny.

**Author's Note:**

> we got so much content today1!! (six bts photos BUT WE'VE BEEN DEPRIVED SO THIS IS WELL DESERVED OKK)
> 
> i'm so sleepy i'm falling asleep typing this so i'm going to go to sleep and edit this properly tomorrow
> 
> hope you liked it!? let me know what you think down below:-)))))) this was based off a tumblr post that i will link properly tomorrow when i am Awake. come find me on tumblr (ourlovelybones) or tweeter (wckdisaks)!!!
> 
> HAPPY TDC COUNTDOWN TO OUR DEATHS


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